Former Yemen president Hadi dies at 80 in Riyadh

Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, the internationally recognised president of Yemen who led a fractured government mostly from exile for eight years as the country descended into civil war and famine before stepping down in 2022, died on Thursday. He was 80.

State-run Yemeni TV said that he died at his residence in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, but gave no other details.

Hadi is survived by his wife, Hala, and six children. Funeral arrangements weren't yet known.

Rashad Al Alimi, the head of the Presidential Leadership Council - the leadership body of Yemen’s internationally recognised government - said Hadi believed in the Yemeni people’s "right to a just state, freedom and human dignity.”

"He led the battle to defend the republican system," Al Alimi said on X.

The government announced three days of mourning, during which flags will be flown at half-staff.

Hadi became president in 2012 after the resignation of longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Backed by the United States and Gulf states, Hadi emerged as a compromise candidate in a one-person election meant to guide Yemen through a political transition.

But his presidency soon got bogged down in unrest.

During his first years in office, Hadi tried to implement wide-reaching reforms, including the unification of the country’s various armed factions.

His opponents accused him of favouring the country’s eastern oil-rich provinces at the expense of the mountainous heartlands dominated by Houthis movement.

Another challenge came from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, long considered one of the global network’s most dangerous branches. The group carried out a bombing in Sanaa in 2012 that killed more than 100 people.

The defining moment of Hadi’s presidency came in 2014, when Houthi fighters swept south from their northern strongholds and captured Sanaa amid growing public anger over economic hardship and political instability.

With support from forces loyal to Saleh, Houthi forces took control of Yemen’s presidential palace in January 2015.

Hadi resigned and escaped to Aden. But he later withdrew his resignation, and a Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in March 2015 in a bid to restore Hadi’s government.

His authority weakened further as divisions emerged in the anti-Houthi alliance.

Hadi spent his final years in office largely out of public view in the Saudi capital.

In April 2022, shortly after a UN-brokered ceasefire was announced, he transferred power to Al Alimi, who began leading the newly formed presidential council backed by Saudi Arabia.

Mansour Hadi was born Sept. 1, 1945, in Yemen’s coastal Abyan province at a time when the southern of the half country was a British protectorate.

His family was part of the influential Al Fadl tribe, one of the largest and most established in the south.

After completing school, Hadi pursued a career in the army, graduating from the United Kingdom's Sandhurst military academy.

His early military years saw him serve in Egypt and Russia, before returning to Yemen.

Hadi was a senior officer when civil war erupted in 1986, following a fallout between rival factions of Southern Yemen’s then governing Socialist party.

He sided with President Ali Nasser Mohammed, fleeing with him to northern Yemen, then an independent state.

In the immediate years after Yemen’s reunification in 1990, Hadi was promoted first to the rank of general and later to defense minister by Saleh.

As a reward for leading numerous successful military campaigns against southern separatists in 1994, Saleh appointed Hadi as vice president of the new republic.

Associated Press